The Origin:
The DiSC model has undergone continuous evolution for nearly 90 years. Dr. William Moulton Marston, a psychologist with a Ph.D from Harvard, first proposed his theories that have evolved into the modern DiSC system in his book, "Emotions of Normal People" written in 1928. Dr. Marston created this work as an effort to describe how a person’s emotions might lead to different group interactions, and how these might change over time. He wanted to help people understand how their own behaviour patterns affected their interactions within a group, and how to manage those behaviours. This was the original creation of the 4 primary components of personality named by Marson as Dominance, Inducement, Submission and Compliance.
Dr. Marston spent his life in the pursuit of a better understanding of human nature, and many of his creations reflect this. Not only did he create the DiSC theory, but he also created the first lie detector and published several self-help books. Perhaps a product of his research, he also created one of the first “dominant women” in a comic book - Wonder Woman.
The Evolution:
The DiSC system was first created into a personality assessment in the 1950’s by Walter V. Clarke, an industrial psychologist. The assessment at first was rather primitive - first, a series of adjectives were chosen by applicants that best described themselves, then a series of yes-no questions were answered.
In 1994, Inscape publishing created a new assessment based on the DiSC system which could be self-administered and scored to gain personal insights into one’s own patterns of behaviour. This is now known as the DiSC classic assessment and is still available. In 2003, technology had advanced to the point that DiSC could make the leap to the digital world, and Inscape launched DiSC into the online environment.
The Future: Everything DiSC
With the tools now available online, Inscape was able to create a much more personalized DiSC experience, appropriately named “Everything DiSC.”
These new assessments offer a far superior experience to anything previously offered, and we believe that if Dr. Marston were alive today, he would be quite happy with the results - as they are culmination of all of his work to understand the human mind.
The reports now display personality as a range of behaviours within a circle - offering a better representation of true day-to-day interactions with others. This change, along with the highly personalized nature of the results and customizable facilitation tools, creates a learning product which is much more easily intuited by its users.